Cruising Colorado and Getting the Goods!

Category: knowledge drop

Donald Trump’s campaign started with his ad hominem birtherism attacks on Obama years ago ad nauseum. That gave him his footing in The Dixie South, which quickly became his stronghold. (Virginia was the only state in The South to vote against Trump, but they always vote blue.) He got 45% of his needed electoral votes (122) in The South.

The South sticks together, and cannabis prohibition is a component of the glue. This is the land where rum smugglers of old venerate the constant left turns of NASCAR. This land is littered with dry counties where moonshine is readily available. States’ Rights are at the tips of all of their lips, but only when buying and selling individual members of a family to work their cotton fields.

Attorney General Sessions got into the US Senate partially thanks to a different southern crop, tobacco. In fact, he had to return $2000 to the RJ Reynolds PAC in 1997[i] because they gave him more money than he could legally accept during the campaign.[ii] I can only assume these are the good people he is talking about when he says “good people don’t smoke marijuana”.[iii]

Who are these “good people”?

They are defenders of 40 years’ worth of more than “800 claims against cigarette manufacturers for damages related to the effects of smoking”.[iv] They lied to their own people so much that their own had bring lawsuits to recoup past Medicare fees that we all had to pay.

Mississippi was the first state to begin these Medicare related lawsuits against Big Tobacco starting in 1994. Other states quickly followed and Big Tobacco was quickly inundated with legal attacks from various states over the next three years. In 1997, after losing smartly, Big Tobacco joined with the states to ask Congress to settle the case. Senator Sessions was their man.[v]

These good people primarily hail from North Carolina. North Carolina, is by far the largest tobacco growing state in the United States.[vi] Their lawyers argued for decades that their cigarettes were perfectly acceptable for human consumption. Why, then, should they be so disinterested in another agrarian crop? What is it about The South that insists that cannabis be embargoed?

Who cares? Frankly, it doesn’t matter. This cat is not going back in the bag. Before 2016, there were zero states in The South that endorsed medical cannabis. Now there are three. Those states are Arkansas, Louisiana, and Florida. Florida is a big deal because 71% of the voters overcame the manadated 2/3 citizen vote.[vii] Yet, the Legislature took it upon themselves to write the law to exclude smoking cannabis.[viii][1] As it stands now, none of the southern states have legal access to cannabis flower. Instead, they dance around their beliefs that a smoked plant is bad for, I guess, their “white women”.[ix]

This most recent election pushed the number of senators representing cannabis states (I will call them cannasenators) over the halfway mark. There are now more states representing cannabis in Congress than there are opposing the herb. 217 is the median. Of the 435 Senators, 262 sitting senators now represent medical marijuana in congress. It has been steadily increasing since 2005.

Cannasenators by Congressional Session, 1995-2015

As Alabama raced to protect their proud lynching heritage, their native son, the Attorney General, reminds four free states that the federal government is in charge and states’ rights mean nothing. His genteel threat to the governors of these four free states:

“…would note the concluding paragraph: ?{sic}nothing herein [in the Cole Memorandum] precludes investigation or prosecution, even in the absence of any one of the factors listed above,in particular circumstances where investigation and prosecution otherwise serves an importantfederal interest.? {sic} Thus, the memorandum ? {sic}does not alter in any way the Department? {sic}s authority to enforce federal law, including federal laws relating to marijuana, regardless of state law.”[x]

Despite all of this, the industry is gaining influence in Congress every election cycle. Congress has repeatedly cut funding off for the Justice Department to investigate legal cannabis businesses in recent years. The Cole memorandum was some much-needed clarification that has been DOJ policy since 2013.

The serious about-face of the new administration has sent ripples through the halls of Congress. But it is not anything new for the cannabis industry. We survived G.W. Bush. In his first term, we got two senators from 2001-2005. He attacked us hard. He put the pink jail in Humboldt County on the map. He even put Tommy Chong in prison. They tried poking so many holes into Prop 215 that it would fall apart. Yet, we got 21 more senators from 2005-2007. And another 21 in the next two years. That’s 42 senators in the last 6 years of his presidency.

Congress knows that something needs to be done about this. Congresspeople have grown bolder in their legislation, and new bills are constantly introduced that would reschedule, if not deschedule cannabis within the Controlled Substances Act. The latest has been brought forth by Senator Cory Booker. It is called the Marijuana Justice Act of 2017.

Remove marijuana from the list of controlled substances, making it legal at the federal level;

Incentivize states through federal funds to change their marijuana laws if marijuana in the state is illegal and the state disproportionately arrests or incarcerates low-income individuals and people of color for marijuana-related offenses;

Automatically expunge federal marijuana use and possession crimes;

Allow an individual currently serving time in federal prison for marijuana use or possession crimes to petition a court for a resentencing;

Create a community reinvestment fund to reinvest in communities most impacted by the failed War on Drugs and allow those funds to be invested in the following programs:

There have been many bills that have come through that tried to deschedule cannabis. None have made it. Will this one? Time and civic activism will tell. The fight against fake laws is not yet over, and it is up to us, the voter, to remind the men and women of Congress that they represent the will of the people. If we don’t say anything, then they have no reason to respond. The lobbyists give them hundreds of millions of reasons to respond. We have only one: the ballot box. Tell your representative what you think of this bill. Remind them of the upcoming vote, and where you stand. Call them constantly.

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The Endocannabinoid System (ECS) is all about homeostasis. Yin and yang are all about balance. Whole-system treatment may be common in Chinese Medicine, but the idea was completely foreign to European-based medicine. It took an American, Walter Cannon, to introduce homeostasis in the medical lexicon in 1930.[i]

A handful of biological systems work together to achieve the many complex tasks we need to make it through a day. These systems are “made up of many networks that are integrated at and communicating on multiple scales.”[ii] An example is the skeletal system, which consists of all of the bones, joints, cartilage, tendons and ligaments in the body.[iii] It is mainly used for “locomotion, support of the body, and the protection of internal organs.”[iv]

Homeostasis means “same” and “steady”. “Homeostasis is the ability of an organism to maintain a stable, constant internal environment, even when the external environment changes”[v]. A common example of this is when the human body sweats to cool down. The water on the skin absorbs body heat as it evaporates off of the body.[vi]

Homeostasis works the same at the cellular level. The cells seek to maintain an equilibrium inside the cell walls as they live in their respective dynamic environments. Through homeostasis, these cells can do a variety of things. The Endocannabinoid System (ECS) is on organs throughout the body and is used to maintain the health of these cells.

The brain, nervous system, liver, kidneys, and immune cells are among the organs that contain the ECS. The system is made of primarily of two receptors, CB1 and CB2. The existence of the ECS in Western (Eastern to me) medicine was discovered in rat brains in 1988 by Allyn Howlett, PhD.[vii]

Then, in 1990 the National Institute of Mental Health published a letter to Nature Magazine that documented the discovery of CB1 receptors in the cerebral cortex of rats. A few years later, in 1993, cannabis receptors were found in the spleen. Now that the CB2 receptor was found, Eastern (Western to most) science took off on researching the ECS.

There are exogenous cannabinoids and there are endogenous cannabinoids that interact with these receptors. Exogenous cannabinoids are cannabinoids that are found in the cannabis plant. CBDs, THCs, and other cannabinoids are examples of exogenous cannabinoids. Endogenous cannabinoids occur naturally in the human body. Anandamide (AEA) and 2-arachidonoylglycerol (2-AG) are examples of endogenous cannabinoids. There is a third cannabinoid category too. It is the scary stuff; lab-made cannabinoids, or synthetic cannabinoids. Spice (HU-210) and Marinol (dronabinol) are two types of synthetic cannabinoids.

Endogenous cannabinoids, or endocannabinoids(ECs), “act as hydrophobic lipid messengers”[viii]. In the CNS, they act as “receptive messengers or synaptic modulators”[ix] and are “produced on demand”[x]. This is unique in the ECS. Other neurotransmitters, such as acetylcholine and dopamine, are already synthesized and stored for later use. [xi]

Lipid messengers are important because they bind to receptors in the cell and use that location for cell signaling. Cell signaling is important because it is how the cell stays healthy. Cells need to “perceive and correctly respond to their microenvoronment”.[xii] Things like tissue repair, homestasis, and immunity must happen in the cell. Otherwise, diseases like cancer and diabetes can set in.[xiii] The ECS a part of the G-coupled protein receptor family, the largest of the cell surface receptors.[xiv]

According to lipidhome, a resource for understanding the chemistry of lipids, “Endocannabinoids exist in dynamic equilibria with many other lipid-derived mediators, including eicosanoids and other oxylipins (oxygenated natural products which are formed from fatty acids by pathways involving at least one step of dioxygen dependent oxidation; many of them have physiological importance)[xv], as part of a versatile system involved in fine-tuning different physiological and metabolic processes, including inflammation, in a tissue- or cell-specific manner.”[xvi]

Endocannabinoids

The endocannabinoid AEA is “produced by immune cells and neurons, and is more selective for CB1R than CB2R. It is found in the brain, spleen, skin, kidney, and uterus”.[xvii] It was dubbed “the bliss molecule” because it “mimics the behavioral actions of exogenous compound”[xviii] THC. According to Dr. Mechoulam, who discovered AEA with Drs. William Devane and Lumir Hanus, in 1992, “THC is an aromatic compound, while AEA is a fatty acid derivative”[xix].

AEA is produced on demand and has many anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties.[xx] It has benefits to the cardiovascular system. It can help lower blood pressure. AEA also affects metabolism by increasing the amount of food consumed. Macrophage-defined AEA has “anti-inflammatory effects both in the peripheral and central nervous system”.[xxi] AEA is also a key player in apoptosis (programed cell death) of many different cell types in the body.

It took three short years for the next endocannabinoid to be discovered. Dr. Mechoulam et al discovered 2-AG in 1995. These endocannabinoids were first found in the brain, but they have been found in other places since. These are also made-on-demand. These seem to be the more important ligands for the CBRs in the body. They are full-agonist ligands, as opposed to the partial-agonist nature of AEA.[xxii]

Full-agonist ligands will fully activate the cell, while partial-agonist ligands will partially activate the cell.[xxiii]

These endocannabinoids interact with cells through receptors throughout the body. CB1and CB2 receptors are part of the G-coupled protein receptor (GCPR) superfamily[xxiv], and the passive member of the Transient Receptor Potential (TRP) family, the Vanniloid Receptor (TRPV1) are a few of the cannabinoid receptors that have been discovered.

CB Receptors

CB1 receptors express themselves primarily in the brain and central nervous system (CNS). They are not limited to the CNS, however, and are found in organs like the liver and the prostate. These receptors are associated with energy balance and may also “play a role in synaptic plasticity”[xxv]. Synaptic plasticity means that synapses are “able to change their strength as a result of either their own activity or through activity in another pathway”[xxvi].

CB2 receptors are primarily expressed in the immune system. There are small amounts in “human B cells, NK cells, monocytes, polymorphonuclear neutrophils and T cells”[xxvii] CB2Rs are also expressed in the thymus and spleen. The exciting thing about CB2R’s, however, is that they show up in dendritic cells. Dendritic cells are antigen-presenting cells (APC) that are key regulators of the immune system.[xxviii]

CB2Rs have also been found in “astrocytes, microglia, neural subpopulations and oligodendroglial progenitors in healthy brains”.[xxix] Microglia are “resident immune cells of the central nervous system” and “are critical players in the development of pain hypersensitivities that characterize chronic pain”[xxx].

TRPV1 Receptors were discovered in 1997 by Dr. David Julius et al. They are located in many organs of the gut, including kidneys, spleen, bladder, and lungs. TRPV1 receptors can also be found in the Central Nervous System[xxxi]. A wide variety of spices can activate these receptors. The most prominent spice is capsaicin, the component that makes chilies hot. Capsaicin has also been found in black pepper, garlic, ginger, horseradish, and cinnamon.

The Gut

The gut is a constantly under attack from antigens. Therefore, we have a wide variety of defenses in our guts to fight these invading antigens. Phagocytes (cells that eat bacteria and other small cells) and dendritic cells (“professional antigen presenting cell, capable of activating naïve T cells and stimulating the growth and differentiation of B cells”)[xxxii], “which are present abundantly in the small intestine lamina propia (siLP), play an instrumental role in maintaining this exquisite balance between inflammation and tolerance.”[xxxiii]

A recent study published in the National Academy of Sciences found that AEA and ECBS in the gut is largely responsible for “maintaining tolerance in the gut”[xxxiv]. Tolerance is important because it suppresses the production of cytokines and the proliferation of t-cells in the gut.[xxxv] The study broke the maintenance down to two steps:

The study also found that these immune-regulatory macrophages expressed themselves the most on the CB2 and TRPV1 receptors. Also, for both CB1R and CB2R, different conformations correspond to different agonists stimuli, consequently activating different signaling pathways (functional selectivity).

The Brain and Central Nervous system

The brain and central nervous system are full of CB1 receptors. These receptors have been found in the mitochondria of some astrocytes (large star-shaped cells of the glia[xxxviii] (supporting tissue intermingled with the essential elements of nervous tissue especially in the brain, spinal cord, and ganglia)[xxxix]), leading some to believe that CB1 receptors can be involved in synaptic plasticity (important for memory use) and energy balance.[xl]

The list comes from “Distribution of the Endocannabinoid System in the Central Nervous System”

Cerebral Cortex- “CB1 receptors are densely expressed in all regions of the cortex”.[xlii] These regions include the cingulate gyrus, frontal cortex, secondary somatosensory, and motor cortex.

Olfactory-in descending orderàhighest in the inner granular cell layer, then the inner piniform layer, less in the external plexiform layer, glomerular layer, and the accessory olfactory bulb

Hippocampus- “high levels of CB1 receptors on large CCK-positive basket and Schaffer collateral- associated interneurons in the hippocampal pyramid cell layer.”[xliii] CB1 is also highly expressed in the molecular layer and the granule cell layer in the dentate gyrus.

Cortical subplate- mainly expressed in the CCK-positive GABAergic basket cells in high levels.

Striatum-low-to- moderate level expression in the nucleus accumbens. “However, CB1 receptors seem to be absent in the dopaminergic terminals projecting from the ventral tegmental area(VTA) to the accumbens”[xliv]

Striatum Medial- basal forebrain, medial and lateral septum and the nucleus of the diagonal band has moderate levels of CB1 receptors

Mesencephalon- extremely high levels of CB1 in the substantia nigra (SN) pars reticulate and low levels in the exact same place. This suggests that “the high levels of CB1 protein are restricted to incoming axonal projections from other brain regions[xlvi].”

Ventral Tegmental Area- dense CB1 neuropil labeling.

Periaqueductal Gray- There are low to moderate expressions of CB1 receptors found in the Periaqueductal Gray. This is “where the ECS is involved in the control of pain sensation, including stress-induced analgesia”.[xlvii]

Hindbrain-low CB1 expression in the medullary respiratory control centers. This is in contrast to the opioid receptors, which “likely explains the low mortality caused by cannabinoid intoxication.”[xlviii]

Spinal Cord-spinal dorsal horn. Scientists believe that this is where the “application of cannabinoids has been found to suppress pain…)”.[xlix]

The endocannabinoid system has led to many discoveries within the scientific community. A handful of pharmaceutical companies have already set out to create cannabis-derived medicines to remedy rare diseases, like Dravet Syndrome. Some companies have since returned positive results while others made fatal mistakes in the drug development process.

The most notable company to successfully bring a CBD-derived drug to market is GW Pharmaceutical, in Britain. Their oral spray, Sativex, is used to help people with multiple sclerosis. They are working on another drug called Epidiolex. This orally-administered, CBD-derived medicine has shown amazing results in its clinical trials with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Positive FDA results in this final set of trial runs could be a game-changer for the official Federal stance on the cannabis plant moving forward. The giant ideological wall that is the current Trump administration, however, is a different story. The sitting Attorney General will never accept FDA findings that prove that cannabis must be descheduled. It will instantly be disregarded as “fake!”. A smear campaign will follow, and the men and women of the FDA will be in its crosshairs. And we will continue to move on in two diverging roads, with many Americans continuing down a different road than our government is paving.

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4/20 and Earth Day go together like the Three Sisters (corn, squash, and beans…based on A Sioux Creation story) in the garden. 4/20 has gained even more relevance today, at the expense of Earth Day. We got so swept up in the billions that we are making off of legal cannabis that we ignored the cost to the environment that comes from cannabis production and sales.

Production Costs

Pic 1: Famous case of the peppered moth in England. The lighter color of these moths helped them blend in to the trees. As the Industrial Revolution set in, the trees grew soot covered from all of the coal factories. The darker color genetic variation (allele) quickly became the dominant allele for the moths. clean air regulations took the coal soot out of the air and off of the trees, giving the lighter-colored moths the genetic advantage.

Colorado saw a 1 percent energy usage increase just after recreational cannabis was introduced here. Similar increases happened in Oregon and Washington. It takes millions of gigawatts of power in order to provide the flowers for the new cannabis market. Instead of using the sun and natural weather cycles, our growers here in Colorado have to work much harder to get a lower quality product.

Rows of energy-sucking lights line the ceilings of industrial warehouses throughout Denver with energy costs that can be over up to $2000 per W/m2. According to a 2016 report by EQ Research, the energy consumption of these industrial grows are equal to those put out by massive Data Centers. Industrial Fans have to mimic wind and produce air flow inside the four walls that keep the natural wind from getting in. Rain can patter the tin ceilings as the dready gardeners water the plants.

Fig 1. proportion of energy use in production facilities.(taken from EQ Research Report “A Chronic Problem; Taming Energy Costs and Impacts from Marijuana Cultivation”.)

This kind of a shock to the infrastructure has utilities seriously considering whether they will have adequate energy for the power grid in the future. Communities like Boulder have enacted carbon taxes to offset the additional environmental costs. California has its own story developing.

Steven D’angelo is the embattled owner of the famous Harbourside Collective in Oakland. He predicts that California will cater to half of the national market. This means a gobload (a whole heckuva lot) of energy consumption will hit the California grid soon (who else remembers the San Diego blackout of 2012?). However, the president of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), Michael Picker, said in an interview earlier this year that the state utilities are “expecting flat or declining growth in California, so if it starts to go the other direction, then we’re going to have to make sure that the electricity is there for both these uses (cannabis production) and everybody else”.

Retail Consumption

The fat cash that is pouring into these ganja shops creates a tremendous amount of waste. They are pumping out millions of little plastic containers, silicon bottles, and other packages like never before. It is a new form of waste that our communities have to deal with. (That, and fuckers graffitiing our forests!) The packaging issue will only increase as more communities open their doors to cannabis in all of its forms.

There is a mixed message coming from the ganja shops in Denver. Some budtenders say that the city does not recycle the bottles, while others will point to a recycle bin in the corner. Some dispensaries will even offer herbal incentives for bringing them your empty bottles.

What does the City of Denver recycling program say?

Smoking containers

Most dispensaries carry recyclable bottles for their flower products. The bottles are usually polypropylene (PP), which is a common plastic that can be recycled. PP is the number 5 or 6 on the bottom of the bottle.

PP bottle that is recyclable

The industry primarily uses two basic bottle designs. One design is with a removable lid, and the other is with a snapping lid that is attached. The bottles are recyclable for both designs. For the bottles with removable lids, however, the lids have to be removed and thrown in the trash before you can recycle the bottle.

PP bottle that is recyclable, but the lid is not.

This bottle AND cap are recyclable!

There are a few dispensaries that use plastic sandwich bags. The bags are not recyclable. Cellophane bags are sometimes used for containers. Green Dragon carries these bags. They are not recyclable either.

Plastic baggie. Definitely not recyclable

Cellobaggie (used at Green Dragon) also not recyclable.

Edible Containers

Most edibles are packaged in recyclable containers. Cardboard and clamshell containers are recyclable. The aluminum cans can be recycled as well. Some edibles are packaged in cellophane packages which are not recycled.

Clamshell container is recyclable

Cardboard like from Loves Bakery is recyclable!

Cannabeverage cans are recyclable!

Cellophane (like these Edipure Gummies) are not recyclable!

Concentrate Containers

The shatter containers are not recyclable. At all. There are some PP types out there, but most people like the containers that are made out of polyethylene. They are Styrofoam 2.0. Dabs are ganja 198.6. It is clear that dabs are the future of cannabis. Hilary Clinton has dabbed. Dabs have been on the Today Show, and they are in 2016 pictures with Paul Ryan. Well, maybe they weren’t actually dabbing, but you had better believe that move is an endorsement of the act of dabbing. (Transitive property says that they endorse the herbs.) These little Styrofoam containers will be a bigger and bigger problem as their environmental impact becomes more pronounced.

The second coming of Styrofoam! NOT RECYCLABLE

The only recyclable dab containers out there

The silicone dab containers are not recyclable. They do have other lives that they can live, however. I reached out to a company that recycles sex toys (yup, that’s a thing) to see if they would take these little containers. No comment as of this writing. Sans second generation dildos, there is another great way to recycle these silicone containers. Art. Get a bunch of those containers, put ‘em through a meat grinder, and glue those vivid colors to the canvas. You could probably pick up enough containers at civic center park after the 4/20 festivities to put a mural on a wall.

Not recyclable, but you are stoners, make me proud and get creative!

Happy 4/20 and Happy Earth Day! As we enter the cannabis era, remember that the only way to win in Capitalism is civil disobedience. Your pocketbook will tell the dispensary owner how well they are doing. If you dab, then demand recyclable containers. If you smoke, then there are plenty of places that use recyclable bottles and are glad to take your money! Love to our Mother! I’m out!

This is part two in my series on cannabis history in the United States. It is a deeper dive into the medical benefits of cannabis that the scientific community has discovered.

Shennong was a legendary Emperor of China around 2700 B.C. His name means Divine Farmer or Divine Husbandman. He is also widely known as the “God of Chinese herbal medicine”. There is no written history of him because he lived before people could write. Therefore, they did not keep historical records yet. He is apocryphal and has attained the status of a god. He spent his life sampling the rich plant life that abounded in the territory that now bears his name, the Shennogjia Forestry District (In July of 2016, UNESCO added it to their World Heritage list.). He is credited with creating Chinese herbal medicine.

It would not be for anther 2000 years that his name would be attached to herbal medicine. Several authors decided to write down the “earliest complete pharmacopeia references and lists an astonishing 365 Chinese medicines” (100 of those medicines would include cannabis) in 220 BC. They placed Shennong as the author of Shennong Bencaojing to honor him as the father of Chinese Medicine.

Soon after this book was published, there was another doctor in the region who understood the benefits of cannabis. Hua Tuo lived around 108 BC. Some say that he invented the first anesthetic when he mixed cannabis with wine, called Mafesan. He was also familiar with acupuncture, which has long been used to treat pain and restore the flow of qi in the body. It is possible that the herb used for moxibustion was cannabis, not mugwort. If this is true, then the medical benefits of cannabis and acupuncture are largely unexplored currently.

People have recognized acupuncture to be a useful treatment for inflammatory pain for a long time. Medicine recognizes that electroacupuncture (EA) “has been regarded as an alternative treatment for inflammatory pain for several decades”. EA has been connected to the CB1 and CB2 receptors in therapy. A 2012 EA study concluded that “Our results suggest that EA reduces inflammatory pain and proinflammitory cytokines in inflamed skin tissues through activation of CB2Rs”

Research on how EA interacts with CB1 receptors has been done for depressed suicide victims, alcoholic withdrawal, and mice with arthritis. A 2004 Molecular Psychiatry article documented “the mood and cognition altering ability of exogenous cannabinoids and alcohol, and the association between depression, suicide and alcohol abuse raise the question whether endogenous cannabinodergic system plays any role in the etiology of depression and suicidal behavior.” The study concluded by saying that “the upregulation of CB1 receptors…strongly suggests a role for the participation of abnormal endocannabinoidergic neurotransmission in the etiology of depression and suicide. The pharmacological manipulation of endocannabinoid system may serve as a new therapeutic target in the treatment of depression.”

The Shanghai First People’s Hospital School of Medicine did a study in 2013 that was based on “Accumulating evidence… that the CB1 and dopamine systems sometimes interact and may operate synergistically in rat striatum…D1/D2 receptors are involved in EA analgesia.” Their conclusion was that “a strong activation of the CB1 receptor after repeated EA resulted in the concomitant phenomenon of the upregulation of D1 and D2 levels of gene expression”.

Cannabis use in Chinese medicine is as old as Chinese medicine itself. Now, as Eastern medicine comes from the west and Western Medicine comes from the east, we are at the convergence of a key herbal remedy that has been known for millennia.

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I want to start the year out with a refresher of cannabis politics. This is a three part series that will illuminate some of the medical research and breakthroughs that have happened over the last few decades.

PART I

“We would rather see our neighbors suffer than succeed ourselves.” Common British phrase

BRIEF HISTORY

Cannabis legalization is a tale of two worlds- inside the United States and outside the United States. Roger Adams successfully filed a patent for isolating cannabinoids with the US patent office in 1947[i]. It was the first time that cannabinoids were isolated. Almost 20 years later, Dr. Raphael Mechoulam isolated the specific chemical compounds in cannabis; the THC and CBD molecules were diagramed for the first time in his lab.[ii] While Mr. Adams’ findings were filed away and left to collect dust, Dr. Mechoulam would go on to have a career in cannabis experiments that now place Hebrew University as the pinnacle of canna medicine and research development.

In order to understand CBD (as well as THC and other cannabinoids) better, a bit of history is necessary. The oldest uses for hemp were as fiber and food. By 2700 B.C., the Chinese Emperor Shen Nung recognized cannabis as medicine. He also brought ginseng and ephedra into the lexicon of Chinese Herbal Medicine.[iii] The cannabis plant is all over Hinduism. A 1200s BC text called the Atharva Veda notes cannabis as one of five sacred plants[iv]. There are ties to Moses and Solomon in the Old Testament, but they all seem to revolve around the work of the 20th century Polish Anthropologist Sula Bennet. She argued that “calamus” and “reed” are both words for “kaneh” or “kaneh bosm”.[v]

Hemp history in the United States has deep roots in cannabis production. Our founding fathers grew hemp. Thomas Jefferson drafted a version of the Declaration of Independence on hemp paper. He was also famously quoted as saying “Hemp is the first necessity and protection of the country”[vi].

Just 5 years after Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937[vii], the US Government realized that they needed hemp to protect the country. As national pride was swelling, the hemp mills sprang up all over the country. They made the parachutes, clothes, tents, and rope for the upcoming war. The offspring of those plants can be seen growing healthy all over Nebraska today. (Colorado hemp growers are looking at the feral fields in Nebraska longingly. They know that NE hemp is the best around. But they cannot grow it because it is not grown in Colorado. Colorado law does not allow for outside genetics to be grown in Colorado.)

Americans quickly forgot about hemp after World War II. Until 1970. This is when Richard Nixon began his crusade against cannabis. This was the year that Nixon created the Shafer Commission to study the whole cannabis plant and its effects on American culture.

The Commission submitted their report to the Nixon Administration in 1972. It was not what the President was expecting. The report concluded that “… the range of social concerns in contemporary America, marihuana does not, in our considered judgement, rank very high. We would deemphasize marihuana as a problem”.[viii]

Of course, Nixon completely disregarded the results of the Report. It stated that the Commission greatly understood how yellow journalism contributed to an “extensive degree of misinformation about marihuana as a drug)” and that they “have tried to demythologize it”.[x] What did President Nixon do with the results of the report that his conservative hand-picked experts gave him?

John Erhlichmann, one of the Watergate Co-conspirators, has a bit of insight:

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”[xi]

Instead of listening to his hand-picked commission of experts, Nixon made cannabis a Schedule 1 drug, meaning it has “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse”[xii]. They succeeded in their mission. “Nearly 40 years later, in 2001 the number of former prisoners living in the United States more than doubled, from 1,603,000 to 4,299,000”[xiii]

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the black populations in the United States saw a steady increase throughout the 1980’s. The drug arrests of the 1980s saw peak numbers in 1989, with 220,000 drug arrests for black people alone.[xiv] The next 14 years would show swings in the arrest numbers. None of them were as drastic as the 1989 arrests, but they did regularly arrest more than 100,000 black americans annually since. Unfornuately, we never saw the pre-Reagan numbers of less than 50,000 arrests-per-year again.

If the numbers for drug dealers/manufacturers were all black, then these numbers could show progress. According to a Brookings article that referenced a 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, “6.6% of white adolescents and young adults (aged 12 to 25) sold drugs, compared to just 5.0 percent of blacks (a 32 percent difference)”[xv]

Cannabis activism is a lesson in human ignorance. It is the story of a government that used yellow journalism to spread fear among their white citizens in order to create a panic and establish resolutions that would demoralize and marginalize the melanin-enhanced people of the United States. They did this by pushing fear and covering up all the other alternatives. The American political propaganda machine dumped buckets of money into prohibitive research. They refused to fund any study that hypothesized any different results.

One study in 1973 discovered opioid receptors in the brain[xvi]. The prohibitionists wanted to find that golden bullet that was proof that cannabis hijacks Cannabinoid receptors in the brain like heroin did for opioid receptors. It would have been a home run for the propaganda of prohibition. Fifteen years later, Allyn Howlett and William Devane to finally discovered cannabinoid (CB) receptors in mice[xvii].

“Soon after, in 1993, a second cannabinoid receptor was found- as part of the immune and nervous systems. Dubbed CB2… receptors they are found to be plentiful throughout the gut, spleen, liver, heart, kidneys, bones, blood vessels, lymph cells and even the reproductive organs.”[xviii]. They found that there were both CB-1 and CB-2 receptors in mice.

At the same time, Dr. Mechoulam’s lab would go on to discover that the human body has its own “endocannabinoid anandamide” in 1992[xix][xx]. “Anandamide is produced in the cell membranes and tissues of the body”. It is a “neurotransmitter and an endocannabinoid”[xxi]. Taken from the Sanskrit word, Ananda (bliss), this molecule is the cannabinoid that, “when it binds to the cannabinoid receptor, it has a calming effect”[xxii]. This is not what the folks at the National Institute for Drug Abuse (NIDA) wanted to learn. It was discovered outside of their jurisdiction, in Israel, so NIDA had no influence on the experiment. A system that synthesizes the 85+ compounds of the cannabis plant within the human body is something to be studied, not imprisoned.

(there is a great deep dive into anandamide here[xxiii]. It talks about anadamide in chocolate as well as its role in the first communications between a mother and her newly forming fetus) (Black Truffles also have anandamide in them.)[xxiv]

These pioneers paved the way for the next generation of scientists to dig in to the medical benefits of cannabis and the endocannabinoid system (ECB). They have found clinical uses for a range of physical and mental ailments. Epilepsy, Fibromyalgia, Multiple sclerosis, Cancer, and Alzheimers are a few of the ailments that research is digging into. In my next segment, I will do a bit of a dive into the research that has come back from the scientific community.